


a thousand years

by nikkiRA



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: F/M, I love that that isn't an AU that's canon bitches, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-09
Updated: 2019-04-09
Packaged: 2020-01-07 07:13:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18405737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nikkiRA/pseuds/nikkiRA
Summary: She turns to look at him with her wide eyes, and a thousand lifetimes of loving her catches up at him all at once and he can’t breathe.





	a thousand years

**Author's Note:**

> me after writing this: this is the sappiest grossest thing in the world  
> also me: let's make it sappier by naming it after that sappy song from twilight

The first time he grabs the sword that seals the darkness he’s hit with -- flashbacks, or memories, or something. Lives he hasn’t lived, yet recognized. Feelings, glimpses. Of him, of her, of a truly absurd amount of green outfits. And the circumstances are different but the thing that remains constant is this: he would die a hundred deaths before he let her come to harm. 

He dreams of them often, these hallucinations or memories or whatever. He doesn’t know them but he recognizes them, like seeing a portrait done of someone you know before you ever knew them. And eventually it gets to the point where he can’t keep it to himself anymore. 

“Do you…” 

She turns to look at him with her wide eyes and a thousand lifetimes of loving her catches up at him all at once and he can’t breathe. 

She tilts her head and studies him like he’s a science project. He’s saved her from the Yiga and she trusts him now, although she still doesn’t seem to know how to talk to him. “Do I what?”

Words never come easily to him, and now they are sitting heavy on his tongue. “Sometimes I see flashes of lives we once led.” That doesn’t do it justice, and he feels foolish as the words leave his mouth. It sounds silly, like a myth or a fairy tale, instead of the very real thing that lives inside of him. 

The princess smiles softly. It’s a smile he’s given his life for over and over. 

“No,” she says softly, and that should be that, except --

Except she’s lying, and he knows it. 

* * *

He dreams of the familiar weight of the sword in his hand. He dreams of her eyes and her power and her command, of the sacrifices she’s made and, in a few horrible instances that cause him to wake in a cold sweat, her death. But it is this version of her that he loves the most; scientific, quick to anger, reckless, stubborn, self-conscious, prone to trying to stuff frogs down his throat. And eventually she starts talking to him more freely, and understanding him more, and he manages to ask her again. 

“Why did you lie?”

She knows what he’s talking about. She understands him so well, now. 

They are waiting out a storm in a small cave near Zora’s Domain. He had thrown some ingredients into a pot and made them a nice enough dinner, and now there was nothing else to do but wait. Zelda is playing around with the Sheikah Slate as usual, and he should have been training, but instead he is watching her. His dreams have recently been filled with a version of her with deep brown hair, and he’s thinking about what his Zelda would look like without the blonde hair he knows so well. Watching her is a bad habit, and something he could easily get lost in. 

She looks up from the Slate. In the dim light of the fire her eyes are almost black, and her smile is sad. “Because I always fail,” she says, voice tight with self-loathing. “I always fail, and you always have to fix my mistakes. I won’t --” she clenches her fists. “I won’t let it happen that way again. Whatever cursed cycle this is, this is where it ends.”

He wants to tell that she’s the strongest person he knows, that he knows she’ll unlock her power. That she shouldn’t listen to her father. But instead he just stays silent. It’s what he does best. Her lips are pulled down and he wants to kiss her. It’s a feeling that is both too much and too little. The want and desire that lives inside of him feels like it could suffocate him sometimes, and he lays in bed at night thinking thoughts he shouldn’t have. About the softness of her lips and the swell of her curves and how it might feel to be buried inside of her, the desire to press his lips to every part of her, to hear her breathe his name. It threatened to consume him, and only his duty to protect her allowed him to keep his head. 

But what was one lifetime's worth of love and need compared to all the other lives that lived inside of him?

“You won’t fail,” he says quietly. Zelda looks like she wants to disagree, but she doesn’t. 

“Which dream is your favourite?”

He doesn’t even have to think about it. “There was a city in the sky. You were my best friend.”

She nods, closing her eyes as if remembering. Does she see what he sees? Does she remember the way she had teased him, the way he had chased her across time? Does she remember when it was over, when they stayed on the surface together, and the clumsy way he kissed her?

It came as no surprise. She’d always been a goddess to him. 

“I remember.” Then she smiles. “I think I was a pirate once,” she says with a laugh. “I think I might like that.”

* * *

They leave the Spring of Power empty handed. Silence sits heavy between them as he pretends he doesn’t hear her crying. Her words from the spring play over in his mind:  _ what is wrong with me?  _ He thinks about the power that lives inside of him, the one that had awoken the sword on his back. He doesn’t know what it was that made him worthy of it, doesn’t know why he was the one chosen by the goddess. Does his power mock her? Does she hate him and the sword he carried? What comfort could he possibly give her?

So he stays silent, tries not to listen to her cries. He has unwavering faith in her, even if no one else does. But he knows that if he tells her this it will just be more pressure on her. 

But she’s the one who brings it up. 

“Do you resent the fact that I remain powerless?” She asks over dinner. He takes his time to answer. 

“Assuming I could resent you for anything, I would never hate you for this. I have no doubt the power inside of you will manifest, but even if it doesn’t… you have never been powerless, Princess. Sealing power or no, I have no doubt that you will save Hyrule.”

Her eyes are pleading, but he doesn’t know what for. 

“Even after all the times I have failed?”

“They were never you,” he says simply. “For all that they were strong, for all the power they possessed.” He shrugs. “You aren’t them. They weren’t you. It’s a serious inadequacy on their part.”

She smiles, small and weak, but it feels like a victory. 

“Thank you,” she says, and he looks at her and thinks  _ how could she not know?  _ How could she not see, after a thousand lifetimes of his soul calling out to hers, that the way he looks at her has never changed? 

* * *

She is studying Vah Ruta, and he is sticking close beside her. Mipha had shown him her newest project, intricately crafted Zora armor. He knew that Zora armor was meant to be given to your betrothed, and he wasn’t quite so oblivious that he could miss the fact that it was perfectly his size. He loved Mipha greatly, it was true, but he did not want to marry her. Even if he shared her feelings, he had pledged his life to the princess. He could not leave Hyrule Castle, and she had her own Domain to run. So he was sticking close to Zelda, trying to avoid any situation that could hurt his oldest friend. 

“You knew her, didn’t you? The Zora princess this beast was named for. Ruto.”

He nods. His former lives come to him in fits and bursts, but he remembers Princess Ruto. 

“I knew all of them,” he says. “Nabooru. Darunia. Medli.”

Zelda smiles at him. “You make friends everywhere you go.”

Had they been friends, these heroes of legend? These people who had fought for him, sacrificed for him? He can’t remember.

His destiny had many casualties. 

* * *

Early on the morning of Princess Zelda’s seventeenth birthday, they set out for the Spring of Wisdom. The Champions were going to wait at the base of the mountain. Zelda is quiet for most of the way, except for one anxious question. 

“What if, even after this, my power still remains locked?”

“Then we will find another option.”

The weather on the mountain is bitter cold and snowy, and they are throwing back elixirs faster than he can make them.  By the time they finally reach the spring, Zelda’s mood is worse, fear mixing with the unhappiness that comes from the freezing cold. She stays in the water for hours, which isn’t necessarily unusual. Zelda could pray for hours on end while barely breathing, or so it seemed, but never in such frigid temperatures. Even if she unlocked her power here, it would defeat the purpose if she killed herself doing it. He doesn’t like interrupting her praying, but he also doesn’t want to transport her frozen corpse home. 

“Princess?” He calls, but she doesn’t answer, her head still bowed in prayer. He calls to her again, but she continues to ignore him, so he has no choice but to wade in after her. 

“Princess, you are going to --” He stops when he get close. She is not praying, she is crying, and she does not respond to his pleas to leave the freezing water. He has no choice but to lift her, an arm under her knees, while she lays her head on his shoulder and sobs. He brings her out of the water and wraps her in a blanket, making a campfire quickly. The best option would be for her to take off her soaked priestess gown, but he’s not about to tell the Princess of Hyrule to undress. So he wraps her up in blankets and extra layers of clothes, keeping her close to him and watching helplessly as she caves in on herself. 

“I’m a failure,” she chokes out. “Just like every other time. I have failed all of Hyrule.”

Boldly, he reaches out and places his hands on her cheeks, lifting her head so they can look each other in the eye. The tears make her eyes seem impossibly green. 

“You are not a failure,” he says firmly. 

“But my power --”

“War is not won by a single person. We will find another way.”

She grips his tunic, and he takes a chance, wiping away her tears. She lifts her head up, pulls away from him, and wipes her face. When she meets his eyes, her own are shining, not with tears, but with resolve. “We have to get going,” she says, and her voice is strong. “The Champions will be waiting.”

As he is packing she comes up to him, touches his cheek gently. She says, “Thank you for your faith in me.” 

Words fail him, as they so often do. He touches the back of her hand instead. 

* * *

Later, the ground will shake, and he will hold her steady as Calamity takes ahold of the castle. He will hold her as she mourns the loss of her friends and family. He will fight to his death for her, taking blow after blow to protect her. The pain will almost overwhelm him, and it will hurt to breathe, but he will stand in front of her until he can’t stand at all, and even after that. 

Later, he will collapse to his knees and stare death in the eyes, and she will jump in front of him, power flowing from her. She will hold him as he loses consciousness, and he will want to tell her that he knew she could do it, that he had died for her so many times and had long ago deemed it a worthy cause, that… but he can’t speak, so all he can do is hope that she can read all of those things in the way he looks at her. 

Later she will place her head on his chest and allow herself one sob before she places a kiss to his bloody forehead and whispers, “This time, it’s my turn to save you.”

* * *

The hero will sleep for 100 years, and he will not dream of the sky, or the sea, or the Twilight Realms. He will only dream of her.


End file.
